15 April 2007

This little boy looks to be about the same age. Maybe a year or two older. Hard to say. My little boy went to T-ball this morning and is watching cartoons now. Nothing blew up. This one went to the marketplace. Something blew up there. I wonder if his parents are still alive?

Some people, mostly conservatives, don't understand why we on the left are so angry. They think we just hate Bush so much that we have become unhinged and are just deranged moonbats. It's true that I hate Bush and all his henchmen, but I hate him not just for being a callow, petulant, incompetent, messianic ideologue. I hate him because I see these pictures, and because I read heartbreaking letters like these, and because I think of my little boy and how my heart would break if he were killed in a stupid, senseless, wicked war like the one Bush started. I think about the fact that some of the letters written by the troops were written by soldiers who were 13 years old on 9/11, and now they are 18-year olds coming home in flag-draped coffins. It makes me weep with frustration and rage and a deep and profound sadness.

I hate George Bush for many reasons. I hate him for making America a country of wiretaps, terrorist watchlists, and indefinite detention. I hate him for condoning torture and compromising America's moral authority in the world. I loathe so many of his policies and the things he has done that it's hard to list succinctly, though I have tried. But mostly, because of all the innocent blood on his hands.

14 comments:

for me, the largest amount of conservative dishonesty on the 'liberals hate bush' issue is that somehow if the roles were reversed (and, for instance, either of the clintons were 'leading' us into the disaster known as iraq with the exact same set of circumstances), or were presiding over the attorney purge fiasco, etc etc., that we wouldn't be having the exact same reaction. that is, that our 'rage' isn't directed at actions, but only at personality.

i don't know one person who identifies as a liberal who would be so morally inconsistent that they would be arguing for the war in iraq if it came with a check that was written by a democrat.

actually, without giving too much away (since i know the internets are monitored), i have a friend who has a parent who has known someone who is very close to bush (like, couldn't be any closer, wears matching wedding rings, etc), and the stories i hear don't do anything but make him sound like just a regular guy who just happens to be way over his head when it comes to his occupation.

honestly, you can't hate the type of guy who comes to dinner with his fly down when friends and family are all sitting around the table, and his wife points it out to him, and he then spends 10 minutes making fun of himself for it.

you know?

and the fact that he was addicted to alcohol and drugs heavily and was (for all we know) able to completely beat it. that's something that A LOT of people in this country, regardless of their political stripes, aren't even near having the strength to accomplish. i don't think sobriety is necessarily something that a truly evil person would even care about doing that, let alone actually making it happen.

but, it's the actions.

bush is someone who is at the front of a movement in this country that we have every right to find contemptible and repulsive without being, during every second of our contempt, being called un-american and being accused of being driven by nothing more than our personal hatred and our own lack of character.

conservatives are just going to have to accept that.

unfortunately for everybody in this country, once they do that, their entire house of cards collapses and a mirror is behind it where the ugly truth gets reflected.

It's not only that, which you describe so passionately, MM, but it's all of the damaged - many irreparably - souls who are caught up in this who will never recover. If our soldiers have a known 33% incidence of PTSD - and that's just the known incidence, with 655,000 Iraqis killed, according to the Lancet survey, just how many do you think are suffering from PTSD there? There are two to three million out of an entire population of 31 million who are now refugees.

What is left of Iraq? What is left to save?

And what is left of US? Is Bush really an elected president at all? We now have a PATRIOT act which has stripped civil rights, we have fundamental Christian dominionism in the exam room dictating what and how healthcare is practiced. We have government mandated abstinence only education instead of scientifically valid reproductive health education. We have government agencies on paths to self destruction and a nation imperiled. We now ridicule science and corrupt research findings so that they march in lockstep to political willful ignorance. We are by policy encouraging "bright flight" of great minds of science and reason to other countries. After this total and comprehensive plundering of "blood and treasure", what will be left of this country and the 90% of the earning underclass population?

I think that Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here has already happened.

I wonder if John J. Coupal believes the IED will be planted by Al Quaeda or maybe the Viet Cong, because we've been told (at one time or another) that both will come to get us if we leave their country.

Now, if the IED is planted by an Iraqi who became a terrorist in response to having American soldiers invade his country, would that bring John back to reality? I bet it wont.

The terrible evil here is that this illegal war has made us so much less safe, over stretched our military while making so many enemies and alienating us from the international community, yet when we ultimately fall victim to the reduced safety this war has brought about, the advocates of the war will cry out "See! I told you so." Amazing.

Awhile back I resuscitated a 4 year old boy that died a few days later. He was beaten, sodomized, and forced to eat his feces. Here are some of the facts that have come out of the case:

Mom: single mother, welfare and medicaid recipient went to moonlight as a stripper and left her son with her boyfriend of 3 weeks.

Boyfriend: Out on parole because of lenient crime and drug sentencing.

Boyfriend friend and accomplice: also a drug abusing drop out.

To me this whole situation seems be be a failure of liberal programs and permisiveness, and certainly anti-conservative. However, I know that these things are too complex to label black and white. I guess that is why I tire of the petulant cry that "We hate Bush, that is why the political right is always wrong"

It was terrible when children died under Saddams regime. It is terrible that genocide is rampant throughout Africa under both conservative and liberal administrations. It is terrible that the Muslims in Iraq are killing eachother. They are, are they not? When we went into Iraq we didn't realize that that these people would blow eachother up. We celebrate life, they celebrate death.

I don't know what we should do about Iraq. If we leave these people are going to annihalate each other until another dictator like Saddam can establish control.

Bush lacked foresight. However the democrats have no other respons ethan "We hate Bush". Instead, it took outrageous pork bribes to muster enough courage to come up with an alternative plan in their bill.

As an ER physician that must make tough decisions with limitied information while often ignoring bias -- I guess that I surprised that you have such seething hatred and venom that seems to completely polarize you on your political views. The hatred and names certainly seems to diminish your credibility of your previous posts.

I GWB came into your ER with his head on fire I wonder if you would even bother to take the time to piss on his head, let alone take a listen to what he had to say.

"When we went into Iraq we didn't realize that that these people would blow eachother up. We celebrate life, they celebrate death."

What are you on about? Civil war was nearly inevitable. What person of even moderate intelligence couldn't predict that? It was a made-up country. Turns out the only way to keep it together was to be a brutal dictator.

Why is it that neocons keep on "well, you don't have a plan"? As though it is now the responsibility of the left to fix an un-fixable situation.

It must be nice to sit up there on your moral high horse able to mete out judgement upon conservatives and the leadership of this country. You certainly have not a clue what this country would be like if Bush and his cronies had taken the coward's way out. That bomb that went off that tragicly killed that little boy's family might have gone off at your son's soccer game or my son's daycare. Quit being a whiny POS and start to realize that this world is a dark and scary place and no amount of blame cast by you or anyone else is going to change that.

The world is a darker and more dangerous place due to the reckless and incompentent actions of the Bush administration. Saddam was not planting IEDs in the US, and was in fact quite successfully contained, thankyouverymuch. Al quaeda was on the run in afghanistan. Now American GIs bleed, civilians bleed, Al quaeda is stronger than ever, and America is less safe and less respected than ever.The sad thing is that Bush not only cannot bring himself to correct his errors, he cannot apparetnly even see them.

Stronger than ever? Stronger than the days of the Khobar Towers/US Embassies/USS Cole/WTC attacks? I think not. Most of their former leaders are either dead or in custody. Now they choose (rather, are forced) to attack softer targets.

"America is less safe and less respected than ever."

We are safer than we were under the previous administration. You think our enemies respected us under the toothless Clinton? I guess that's why we kept getting attacked, because our enemies respected us so much.

Awhile back I resuscitated a 4 year old boy that died a few days later. He was beaten, sodomized, and forced to eat his feces. Here are some of the facts that have come out of the case:

Mom: single mother, welfare and medicaid recipient went to moonlight as a stripper and left her son with her boyfriend of 3 weeks.

anybody ever notice that whenever conservatives start to discuss entitement programs, and that dark black hole called universal healthcare, they always ALWAYS go to the well with the most over the top, ridiculous, absurd examples of welfare abuse?

it never fails.

to listen to a conservative talk about welfare and the like, there literally are no human beings who have ever used government assitance.

instead, in their place, there are just heartless monsters who are government leeches and would kill us all tomorrow if they had to pay their own way through life for two seconds.

oh, but wait! it's the liberals that are the elitists!! not the conservatives. what was i thinking?!?!?

Stronger than ever? Stronger than the days of the Khobar Towers/US Embassies/USS Cole/WTC attacks? I think not. Most of their former leaders are either dead or in custody. Now they choose (rather, are forced) to attack softer targets.

but wait, all you guys do is talk about how we'll be fighting them here if we don't fight then there, but then now they're weak and unable to do anything and basically the gang that can't shoot straight?

wait, so he wasn't contained before we invaded him? he was ready to leap up and destroy humanity if commander codpiece hadn't heroically lied us into battle?

why is it that we were able to roll over their military in about a day, and that 3/4ths of their military enlisted and officer corps completely gave up immediately before they even saw our invading troops?

sounds like a well-oiled, hardly contained destructive war machine that saddam had at his disposal to me.

and oh, that little thing about no WMDs, too. but hey, why keep harping on that?

Shadowfax

About me: I am an ER physician and administrator living in the Pacific Northwest. I live with my wife and four kids. Various other interests include Shorin-ryu karate, general aviation, Irish music, Apple computers, and progressive politics. My kids do their best to ensure that I have little time to pursue these hobbies.

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